Chronic health conditions and other long-term health issues are prevalent and expensive realities in the healthcare industry. Such health issues include heart disease, stroke, cancer, asthma, and diabetes. There is an increasing demand for in-home medical services to maintain satisfactory healthcare services, while reducing healthcare costs. These services may best be utilized for patients requiring frequent healthcare visits or monitoring. For instance, patients with chronic conditions may be placed on an in-home healthcare program utilizing preventative healthcare methods. Preventative healthcare methods promote the general well-being of patients and curtail the formation of costly medical conditions.
Preventative methods include patient education, periodic communication between the patient and the healthcare provider, and providing patients with tools or treatments for managing chronic conditions or patient behaviors. With these measures in place, patients may take an active role in their own healthcare and treatment. Additionally, when patients are able to frequently assess their condition, discrepancies from the usual condition may indicate the need to contact a healthcare provider. These contacts may prevent a potentially serious health condition from escalating and provide efficient healthcare to the patient. Thus preventative methods attempt to reduce the healthcare costs and avoid potentially tragic consequences of more serious health conditions. However, the success of a preventative treatment program often depends on the attitude of the patient and their willingness to participate in the recommended programs and methods. Thus, a patient-friendly program is desirable to maintain patient compliance with a specified preventative treatment program.
An in-home healthcare patient may have their condition monitored by a healthcare provider through use of a networked system for communicating information to the patient and remotely monitoring the patient. The system described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,968,375 is one such system to remotely monitor a patient's condition. Oftentimes, mobile healthcare providers are needed to provide various services and treatments directly to in-home patients. These services may be routine, on a need-based basis, or dynamically changing.
However, prior remote health monitoring systems do not sufficiently address many problems facing mobile healthcare providers and patients. First, healthcare providers must manage dynamic patient needs. For instance, in-home healthcare monitoring systems, such as Health Hero Network technologies, enable healthcare providers to oversee the condition of numerous patients simultaneously. Depending on individual patient needs, healthcare providers may be required to periodically visit patients within their homes for treatment, or visit patients within a controlled care setting, such as a hospital or assisted living facility. Healthcare providers may be faced with increasingly difficult scheduling demands as the number of patients utilizing in-home healthcare increases, or as the conditions of the patients change. For example, certain patients may require regular or routine in-home visits, but other patients may require in-home visits on a need-based basis or as per patient request. Thus, the traveling schedule for a healthcare provider may be continuously changing and dynamic. These scheduling demands may increase the administrative costs for in-home health care, thereby potentially offsetting the cost-saving benefits of in-home health care. Additionally, the efficiency of regularly scheduled in-home visits may be reduced through the dynamic nature of patient conditions, weather and traffic conditions, and other factors.
Second, in-home healthcare patients may require healthcare services while traveling such as when on business trips or vacations and may need to obtain healthcare supplies or testing while traveling. For instance, preventative treatment programs and other in-home medical treatments may require a patient to obtain medical supplies, treatments, tests, diagnostics, and other healthcare utilities located away from the patient's home. Patients may have difficulty determining what locations are appropriate for purchasing the supplies they require or for undergoing the proper tests. For example, a patient may have to spend a considerable amount of time calling healthcare companies and pharmacies to determine if they stock a specific medical supply, or visiting with various healthcare providers to determine what facility provides the requisite testing equipment, or simply attempting to find the lowest cost supplies, this may be especially beneficial for individuals in an unfamiliar area, such as when on vacation or traveling, and can assist patients in pricing supplies and determining the availability of supplies. Additionally, many in-home healthcare patients have limited mobility and are unable to travel significant distances to find the external services they require. This limitation may be the result of physical, economic, or other constraints, and obtaining external services can be difficult because of the need to schedule transportation. Furthermore, a patient may be an un-willing participant, thus it may be difficult to determine if the patient has consented to a desired regimen, for example, if they have attended physical therapy, an exercise session, and the like.
Thus, efficient and effective patient care demands a system that assists a healthcare provider to dynamically schedule in-home patient visits for patients undergoing a health monitoring program. Additionally, there is a demand for an efficient system to link in-home healthcare services with geographical information relevant to healthcare services.